


the magic inside you

by acemoritz



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Bisexual Wendla, Cyclops Anna, Deaf Moritz Stiefel, Deaf Otto Lammermeier, Deaf Wendla Bergmann, Fairy Wendla, Hanschen And Thea Are Siblings, Knight Ilse, Tags to be added, deaf thea, hard of hearing ernst, he is basically belle but Feral, melchior is annoying, nonbinary Ilse, picture dwsa cast
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:00:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24041716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acemoritz/pseuds/acemoritz
Summary: In five days Wendla Bergmann would be crowned as queen of Hanover, but before that can happen, she must go on a days-long journey with her Knight, the charming Ilse Neumann. Simultaneously, Melchior Gabor replaces the boredom of village life with a mission to solve the mystery of the strange boy from the forest.
Relationships: Wendla Bergmann/Ilse Neumann, past Wendla/Melchior
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wendla meets her Knight and begins her journey to become queen of Hanover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story heavily features deaf characters - I am not deaf, so if I in any way misrepresent the deaf experience, please comment so I can better portray them!  
> Also, Wendla refers to Ilse using she/her before later (third chapter) finding out that they use they/them.  
> Thanks and enjoy :)

“Wendla!”  
  
She awoke with a start to a tap on her shoulder and her mother’s shrill signs. And immediately, she was reminded of an unbelievable fact: In five days Wendla Bergmann would be crowned as queen.  
  
It was true that she had been preparing her whole life for that moment, but it was still unbelievable that, in a short five days, she, a nineteen year old fairy, would be ruler of an entire kingdom! The mere idea of it all settled anxiety in the pit of her stomach. Yet, the Bergmanns had been ruling for ages, and she had always tried her very best in classes to prepare herself for her position.  
  
“Wendla, dear, you slept in again,” her mother’s face was simultaneously gentle and cold. Now that her reign was coming to a close, as every reign ended with a certain age, being passed down to the next in line, her mother was low-patience and tired, but at the same time trying to be warm to Wendla and praising her for the (not yet) job well done as queen-to-be. “You have to go to breakfast quickly.”  
  
“Quickly?” Wendla repeated, trying to remember what she had on the schedule for today. Each day was busy, filled with seemingly endless amounts of tasks regarding the castle, the citizens, the laws, her own training, not to mention her own personal care and family time. It was almost unmanageable - and she wasn’t even queen yet! Not that Wendla would ever back out! She just had a strong feeling in her gut that told her managing it all on her own was going to be difficult, especially when she could never seem to keep track of what was on her plate for the day.  
  
Her mother sighed. “You have to meet your assigned knight for your journey out.”  
  
“Oh, right!” Wendla exclaimed, recognition hitting her. “Give me a moment to get changed, please?”  
  
Affectionately, her mother smiled back at her, nodded, and glided out of the room, shutting the door behind her.  
  
Wendla dressed herself out of her nightgown, and started pulling on her favorite business-around-the-castle dress, a white gown that settled right over her knees and matched the white glimmer of her wings. Smiling at herself in the mirror with uncontained excitement, she leapt out of her room and into the hallway, making her way to the kitchens for breakfast.  
  
Today, she would be meeting her Knight. Wendla had always thought about her knight with a bold capital K, because that’s how big a deal it was. Each queen had one knight assigned to protect them no matter what, who would stay with them their entire lives (given the knight didn’t die on a mission). Wendla had spent many a night fantasizing about her Knight, who would be a lifelong friend. Maybe even become something . . . more? But with her coronation nearby, the day had finally come for her to meet her Knight. Finally!  
  
And the journey: all queens, before their coronation, had to journey outside the castle and throughout the village to meet with the royalty of the neighboring castle. A couple-days-long journey that she would be spending with her Knight, alone, just getting to know each other! Wendla was all but twitching with excitement.  
  
She barely noticed that she had reached the kitchen - a bustling room of busied cooks and family members alike, all scrambling to get things done in time. Knowing she was running late, Wendla just grabbed a jam scone to eat, plus a glass of her favorite berry juice.  
  
“Wendla, hey!” her cousin Ida called, tapping her shoulder. “Excited for your big day?”  
  
Wendla nodded enthusiastically, shoving the entire scone into her mouth.  
  
“Geez, slow down,” the other laughed. “When are you supposed to be there?”  
  
She took a second to gulp down her juice, then responded with a simple “About right now.”  
  
Reaching the outside gate in less than five minutes would be an impossible task for just about anyone, but, luckily Wendla wasn’t just absolutely not “just about anyone;” she was also the to-be queen who lived in the castle. So, through racing down the hallways, she made it to the fresh air of the front lawn just on time, panting comfortably.  
  
Her mother looked astonished that Wendla had the audacity to arrive so - almost - late to her own meeting, but Wendla just smiled, and asked, “When’s my Knight coming?”  
  
Her mother rolled her eyes, knowing of Wendla’s slightly obsessive interest in her knight. “Coming soon. Be patient.”  
  
I’ve had to wait my whole life for this, Wendla almost said. But didn’t, since she had to be a poised fairy. There was a reputation to uphold.  
  
“So,” she turned her head to see an official sternly watching her, his judgment-misty eyes staring her down. “I hope you’re all prepared?  
  
“I am!” Wendla responded with a nod. “My bag’s over there.”  
  
His eyes flicked to her small knapsack that rested on the side of the castle’s walls. And frowned.  
  
“Will you be able to manage without your castle staff?” he continued, and Wendla felt her face heat up slightly. She was an intelligent person. She was level-headed and reasonable and could problem solve. She had been training her whole life for the position of queen, studying until three in the morning and working hard until she was confident in her abilities. But there were still people like this - who looked at her petite figure, her baby fat, her “cute” features and saw a child and thought she couldn’t handle it. It made her so angry, but she knew if she said anything out of line it would just be proving his point, so she just smiled and said “I’ll be fine.”  
  
A spark of movement flickered within her peripheral vision. Turning so fast that her dark hair whipped against her neck, Wendla saw the rumbling of a couple horses in the distance, approaching the castle quickly, and butterflies ecstatically fluttered inside her. Excitement flared within her when she saw a small figure in silver on one of the horses -  
  
Her Knight.  
  
She droned out the dialogue of the castle staff beside her and focused on watching the horses gallop over, until her Knight was hopping off of his horse and taking off his steel helmet and -  
  
That wasn’t a guy, actually.  
  
Her Knight was a girl (as far as Wendla could tell) with short-cut brown hair, a soft face, deep eyes surrounded by eyeliner, and bright lipstick. She was just about everything that Wendla had not expected from her Knight. Somehow she had gotten the most unconventional Knight their kingdom had probably ever seen.  
  
Wendla couldn’t stop her face falling. She couldn’t help the disappointment from settling in her gut. In no way was she opposed to female knights or anything; the kingdom had been filled with lots of gal knights, especially recently, but, that being said, no queen in fairy history had yet had a female Knight accompanying her.  
  
Though Wendla wanted to ignore it, she knew the real reason of her severe disappointment in this situation: she couldn’t fall in love with a girl.  
  
Not because she was straight - Wendla was far aware that she wasn’t, but she had grown up knowing and being told that she could not marry a girl, and marriage was an absolute necessity. Their monarchy had always been extremely conventional (see: no female Knights, boring picture-perfect family tree). Wendla already had experienced dating limitations in her life, actually - a year or two ago, she had been dating this poor peasant boy named Melchior, and her family had just about flipped. She had been allowed to date him (which wouldn’t even be the case if Melchior was a girl), but her parents had made it clear a marriage wouldn’t be following, because of his status. That had upset her for a while, but Melchior ended up being a pretty bad boyfriend anyway, so it worked out.  
  
Wendla had spent many a night fantasizing about falling in love with her Knight; there were various queens who had gotten married to their Knights, made easy by knights’ inherent high status, and it seemed so simple a solution for Wendla, who had trouble interacting with the villagers and making friends. It was heartbreaking to have that fantasy be crushed so quickly.  
  
Realizing that one of the masters surrounding her Knight was talking to her, Wendla forced herself to look up at him and listen: “. . . so excited for your coronation. We know you’ll be great. Anyway, this is Ilse, they’re the absolute best knight in our whole facility, and the most charming, by far. You’ll get along.”  
  
Ilse smiled wide at her, and Wendla couldn’t help but notice how pretty she was, but it didn’t matter.  
  
This was a disaster waiting to happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ive been sitting on this story for so long so I hope u enjoy my fantasy gays!!! can u tell I am in love w miss wendla bergmann


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melchior Gabor is about to die from the boredom of village life, until he decides to uncover the mystery of the stranger from the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, like usual, features deaf characters, so if I misrepresent aspects of deaf experience please let me know !!!

Melchior hated this town. 

Most people already knew that, though. Melchior wasn’t intending to brag when claiming that that  _ everyone _ in this village knew him: He was notorious for a number of things - arguing with the priest in the middle of a mass, punching a TA for censoring his presentation, stripping during sex ed class (that was a long story). Remarkably enough, his village-wide fame was achieved mostly through his relationship with the to-be fairy queen, Wendla Bergmann. Although understandable since it was basically the equivalent of dating a celebrity, it was a little bit frustrating to be constantly recognized as the guy that almost got that fairy pregnant. 

Which. 

Sounds like an entirely different matter. 

Honestly, doing things like dating royalty were the only things that could keep him sane here. In a kingdom with fairies, werewolves, vampires, trolls, you name it, Melchior Gabor had somehow ended up in a town with far too many beings like himself - normal, boring humans. He had still gravitated towards an interesting group of friends, but even they had grown dull with time. 

Like, right now, he was reading a book he must’ve already read dozens of times (he lived in the village library, so he had read most of the books in the entire village) while Melitta Rilow was going on and on about some scandal to their group. 

“. . . we had fifteen hecking bezoars in our shop just two days ago and now we only have  _ two _ !” she flipped her curly hair over her shoulder. “Like, we never use bezoars, and we looked back at the receipts and  _ no one bought them _ ! Where in Merlin’s name are they going?”

The infamous and wealthy Rilow family owned a chain of wizard’s tools and witch’s potions apothecary-type stores that was so large that people traveled miles to get their supplies from the Rilows specifically. The current owners, parents of his friends Hanschen, Melitta, and Thea, had been the victims of an unbelievable number of accusations of murder, deceit and dark magic, but they managed to slip their way out of every single one. Their children had been ready to inherit the stores for a long while and had been working there as long as Melchior could remember. 

“Did you try looking where you last had them?” Hanschen deadpanned, and Melitta whacked his arm. Hanschen was readily cynical, and Melchior wasn’t even sure that Hanschen even liked their business at all. Then again, Melchior wasn’t entirely sure Hanschen liked anything. 

“You don’t get it, Hans, you never run the witch’s side of the store,” Thea signed. 

“And I never will,” Hanschen smiled an annoying smile. 

“The gendered magic practices are already being protested across the kingdom,” Melchior interrupted, letting himself indulge in the conversation for as long as it remained worthy listening to. “Soon, your store will, more or less, have to rework its system or else people will start boycotting.”

“Oh, shut up, Melchior,” Hanschen crossed his arms. The two had never gotten along. “Dated a princess once and now he thinks he’s the king.”

Melchior smiled and flipped him off, returning to his book pages. 

“I bet someone stole them,” said Anna (the cyclops) fervently, and Otto (the sailor, yeah, just a normal sailor) nodded. “You should report that.”

“It’s probably a misunderstanding,” Ernst said meekly. Ernst was a tall boy with dark hair and eyes who moved in to their village only a month ago. He had moved from a  _ super cool _ and eccentric coastal village an hour or two away, and, while the group kept plaguing him with questions about his life there, Ernst kept his personal life something to be wondered about. 

“God, Ernst, you’re such a pacifist,” Hanschen smiled at the other, making Ernst blush and roll his eyes. 

Yeah, Melchior couldn’t take much more of this nonsense. 

“I’m off for a walk in the woods,” he announced, standing up. The group was used to this, knowing it was not an invitation. Melchior had taken to sitting by a tree in the woods and just letting himself dream, because his life was just so  _ boring. _

It took a ten minutes walk to get there, in which he did his absolute best to ignore any person he might know on the way there and then dash through the forest to his favorite spot - it was just so adventurous and new, the forest was, and even if he was still doing the enormously mundane act of reading, at least it was in a dynamic environment. 

Yet, this time, on his path sprinting through the forest, Melchior stopped for a moment, hearing some rustling leaves in the distance, paired with heavy footsteps. While there were typically noises in the forest, - it was a  _ forest _ , after all - there weren’t usually other beings present in  _ this  _ area of the forest, since there was a central pathway not too far away for travelers. So, Melchior approached the sound, almost surprised to find a boy about his age walking so slow that Melchior doubted he wanted to be walking at all, with his head dropped to face the ground. Instinctively playing Sherlock, Melchior noticed an expensive-looking bag held over his shoulder and a studded jacket - this kid must be rich - but at the same time, he had a head of ruffled dark curls and a sickly complexion, as if he hadn’t slept or showered in days. 

Because Melchior loved nosing into other people’s business, he called out, “Hey, what’s up?”

The adolescent didn’t react at all. 

Frowning for a second, Melchior tapped the boy’s shoulder, ignoring the fact that the other managed to flinch so much he basically jumped two feet backwards, nearly falling into the nearby stream. “Are you alright?”

Now that the boy’s face was focused on his own and not the leaves beneath them, Melchior noticed two things, his face was properly bruised, like  _ properly,  _ a real fight. Melchior had been in various fights, by choice, usually, because he enjoyed fighting, but he had also been jumped by a group of violent village idiots after the whole princess scandal, so Melchior recognized those bruises as similar to when he had looked back at himself in the mirror a few days after that fight. Second thing, somehow more startling, were his brilliant green eyes that popped vivaciously on his face, stilling Melchior for a moment. 

At least, until the boy shrugged and tapped his ears, and Melchior had a little  _ oh _ moment. It was a relief that the school system had incorporated sign into their syllabus ever since Wendla’s deafness had been announced. Then signed, with his mediocre to pretty good grasp on sign: “Sorry. You just look lost.”

It still took the boy a second to respond, seemingly completely rattled by the interruption. “I am a little lost.” 

“What are you looking for?” Melchior asked, intrigued beyond words about this strange boy. 

The other dropped his head to the ground again, distracted. “If only I knew.”

Melchior couldn’t help but snicker at that answer that wasn’t quite an answer at all, and almost added on ‘ _ Then what’s the use of looking?’ _ but instead signed, “What’s your name?”

It took even longer for him to answer back this time, taking a full ten seconds to fiddle with his jacket buttons before letter-signing ‘ _ A-L-E-X,’ _ not even providing a name sign to go along with it. 

“Ok, hey, A-L-E-X,” Melchior signed somewhat ironically, waiting for a name sign, but Alex didn’t seem to notice this, just half waving and staring at him with those green eyes. “I’m M-E-L-C-H-I-O-R.” Melchior actually put in that extra three seconds to show his name sign, but Alex seemed so out of it that Melchior wondered whether he had even taken it in. 

“Do you want -” A glint of light in Alex’s bag caught Melchior’s eyes. “ _ Is that a sword?” _

“I - what?” Alex flinched again, squinting at Melchior but also instinctively pulling his bag away from Melchior. “Of course not.”

“That is  _ clearly _ the hilt of a sword,” Melchior whined, grabbing the bag toward him while ignoring Alex’s protests, then sliding it out - _it_ being indeed what he had thought, a sword, with a surprisingly short silver blade and a jeweled hilt. “Why the hell do you have a fancy sword?”

Nearly shivering, Alex shrugged again, eyes wide and gathering, as if trying to figure out what Melchior was thinking, and, honestly, even  _ Melchior  _ didn’t know. What kind of kid carried around a super expensive-looking sword? What was he planning to do with it? 

“Where’d you come from?” Melchior asked instead. 

The shorter boy blinked slowly with long, dark eyelashes, staring through Melchior with speckled green eyes. 

“A while from here,” Alex eventually signed. 

He still had the stance of a deer in headlights, hunched over as if he would start bolting away any moment now. Even his breathing was staggered and panicked, and Melchior felt an abnormal weight somewhere inside him when he wondered what happened to this kid that made him so jumpy, scared, ready to run. 

“I live over there,” Melchior pointed behind him, where the cobblestone paths of his town could be seen faintly through the trees. 

Alex paused before tentatively asking “Where’s ‘over there?’”

“Hanover. It’s small and boring.”

“What castle?”

“ _ What castle? _ You weren’t kidding about living a while from here.”

“Sorry.” Alex’s face went red. 

“Wendla’s. Since you were wondering.”

Melchior almost swore he saw the hint of a smile on Alex. “Wendla? Has she been coronated yet?” 

“She’s leaving for the journey now. And look at you calling  _ Princess Wendla Bergmann _ by her first name! Like you’re best friends.” Melchior almost shoved Alex playfully, but ended up just sort of resting his hand on his arm, which Alex didn’t seem to really take in. 

“You did the same thing!”

“We  _ are _ on first name basis though. So it’s different.”

“Is everyone in Hanover on first name basis with the princess?”

“No. Just us.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“We  _ might _ have dated.”

“That was  _ you? _ ” Alex actually smiled, small but warm, as if recognizing an old friend, but, after a second, he jumped back, as if suddenly noticing Melchior’s arm touching his. 

“I’ve really got to go now -” He paused, seemingly not quite able to remember Melchior’s sign name. “It’s been . . . I’ve got to go.”

“You can’t just leave,” Melchior scoffed. With no response, he continued. “Come with me back to my house.”

Alex averted his gaze. “I wish I could.”

Melchior rolled his eyes. “Come on, you look like garbage. Let’s at least fix up your face.”

“I can’t,” Alex repeated, clutching his bag against his chest as if it was some lifeline. He swayed in place, his movements still shaky and uncertain. Melchior couldn’t leave him here, not quite because he was worried about him, but more because of his curiosity about the other’s history. 

“Well, you’re going to,” Melchior grabbed Alex’s arm, pulling him forward in a stumble. For a moment, Alex dragged his feet against the soft ground in protest, but it didn’t take long for him to give in. Melchior knew he was great at forcing people to do things. And hopefully, he would be able to force Alex’s past out of this mysterious boy. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> melchior is so fun to write because i do not like him  
>  also Wow I Wonder Who This Alex Guy Could Possibly Be.... Alex Boniello? ...Haha Just Kidding ..........Unless??????


End file.
